Aircrafts and space vehicles including military aircrafts are increasingly using optical fibers for communications, weaponry, and other systems. An optical star coupler forms an integral part of an optical transmission network.
A star coupler is a device that takes an input signal and splits it into equal output signals. Conventional star couplers typically use glass optical fibers (GOFs). It is inefficient to use such GOF based star coupler in plastic optical fiber based data network architecture. Use of different materials, i.e. plastic optical fiber (POF) and glass optical fiber, having different diameter, optical characteristics and refractive index in a network architecture results in large coupling loss. To ensure optimum coupling efficiency, it is preferred that data network architecture uses fibers and couplers of similar material with closely matched optical characteristics and refractive index.
Due to differences in the physical and material characteristics of GOFs and POFs, the method of making GOF based star coupler may not be used for making a POF based coupler. Continuous efforts are being made for optimum and cost effective design of star couplers.